Report: In a 'humiliating' and 'threatening' tone, Trump lambasted Mexico's president during a phone call

Republican
presidential nominee Donald Trump and Mexican President Enrique
Pena Nieto in Mexico City on August 31.REUTERS/Henry Romero

During a phone call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on
Friday, US President Donald Trump disparaged Mexico and
threatened to use military force against the drug trade,
according to Dolia Estevez, a journalist based in Washington, DC.

In an interview with the Mexican news outlet
Aristegui Noticias, Estevez, who cited sources on both sides of
the call, said, "It was a very offensive conversation where Trump
humiliated Peña Nieto."

Estevez said that while both the White House and the Mexican
president have released information about the call, both sides
characterized it as a "friendly" conversation and neither disclosed
what was said.

Estevez said she "obtained confidential information"
corroborating the content of the discussion.

"I don't need the Mexicans. I don't need Mexico," Trump reportedly told the Mexican president. "We
are going to build the wall and you all are going to pay for it,
like it or not."

Trump hinted that the US would force Mexico to fund the wall with
a 10% tax on Mexican exports "and of 35% on those exports that
hurt Mexico the most," Estevez wrote in Proyecto Puente.

Before the call, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump was considering a tax on imports
from Mexico to pay for the wall.

Pena
Nieto and Trump.REUTERS/Henry
Romero

"He even complained of the bad role the [Mexican] army is playing
in the fight against narco trafficking," Estevez, who writes for Forbes and is close to the Mexican
journalist and anchorwoman Carmen Aristegui, said during an
interview with Aristegui's eponymous news
outlet.

Trump "even suggested to [Peña Nieto] that if they are incapable
of combatting [narco trafficking] he may have to send troops to
assume this task," she said.

The US president "said he would not permit the drugs coming from
Mexico to continue massacring our cities," Estevez added. She
said Trump went so far as to say, "I really didn't want to go to
Mexico last August," referring to Trump's visit to the Mexican capital last
year.

Peña Nieto was accompanied on the call by people from his
country's foreign ministry, while Trump was joined by "the famous son-in-law," likely meaning senior
adviser Jared Kushner, and chief strategist Steven Bannon.
Kushner is reportedly close to Mexican Foreign Minister
Luis Videgaray, and they were seen as the likely go-betweens for
the two governments.

"Before this unusual onslaught, Peña was not firm," Estevez said.
"He was stammering."

Despite this confrontation, the Mexican government still believes
in negotiating with the Trump administration, Estevez said.

She also reports that Videgaray met with US officials
on Tuesday in Tapachula, near the Mexico-Guatemala border.

According to Estevez, the Mexican foreign minister met with
Craig Deare, a member of Trump's National
Security Council handling the Western Hemisphere; Adm. Kurt Tidd,
commander of US Southern Command; and Roberta Jacobson, the US
ambassador to Mexico. The Mexican Foreign Ministry has made no
mention of the encounter.

Estevez says the meeting was to address Mexican
cooperation in deterring the flow of Central American migrants
through Mexico to the US. However, neither US nor Mexican
officials contacted by Estevez would confirm the meeting.